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Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

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Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#381

Post by greggman3 »

bconnorwhite wrote: post #234

This is the MacOS 11 thread all over again. Apparently no one on HN has been through a redesign... For those of you complaining, congratulations, you've discovered ~ nostalgia ~ In two weeks you'll inevitably find the old design ugly, and forget GitHub ever looked any other way. In 5 years, each will get another round of improved designs, and there will be a thread on HN full of people complaining about how the new d…

"less clutter" isn't by itself an objective positive. For example in Japanese culture you might be surprised to find information density is considered a positive. Yes much Japanese aesthetic design is considered to lean to simple but for information presentation higher density is usually considered better.

So this idea that ""Low information density" means less clutter." is objectively better is false.

For me, I'm trying to get work done so my criteria is does the design help me achieve that. For an ad or a piece of art to hang on my wall, a poster, something else having a less cluttered design might be good but it's not so clear it's good for developers who interact with the same UI several times day.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#383

Post by meristem »

natfriedman wrote: post #284
ljm wrote: post #126

I submitted feedback over it but, aside from the over-reliance on rounded corners, and making pills and buttons hard to separate, the single worst change is that you can't see the latest commit status from the repo screen. Instead, you get the commit hash, and have to click a tiny ellipsis button to get the commit message and the status indicator. When I'm browsing on github and not using git directly, the commit sho…

Thanks for the feedback about the latest commit status. This is something we should definitely fix. Also – I don't think there is a principle of lowering information density at work here. I think it's just a design that we will keep iterating. We are pro information density at GitHub.

Very curious here: Can you tell us what the user interviews indicated, what were the personas and problem to solve, and successes/challenges usability tests uncovered?

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#384

Post by verdverm »

fowl2 wrote: post #379
lostmsu wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why aren't you doing A/B?

What would be the evaluation metric? Certainly measures like "engagement" could give exactly the opposite signals - hide everything behind more clicks and you'll get a lot more clicks!

My clicks will be going away

Google did us a favor and made an awesome Golang client library specific to GitHub

https://github.com/google/go-github

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#385

Post by ryanjodonnell »

natfriedman wrote: post #362
Firehawke wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a light sensitivity condition; large patches of white really hurt to look at for any real amount of time. Please consider implementing an optional dark variant in the vein of https://github.com/StylishThemes/GitHub-Dark as an option.

It's coming.

Cant wait!

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#386

Post by nmfisher »

Hedja wrote: post #117

I have a single major problem with all of their new layouts. They place content at extreme ends of the screen, completely stretched out like a rubber band with No Man's Land in the middle. In this case, the top half is stretched and the bottom half is centred. Completely inconsistent and tiring for your eyes darting around corners of the screen. Example: https://twitter.com/JahedDEV/status/1275532988772683776 I don't…

Just logged into GitHub, freaked out when I saw the redesign, and came straight here to say exactly this. It's unnatural eye movement to look wide for platform navigation, then narrow for README/repository navigation. This is outright bad design.

There was nothing wrong with GitHub's UI before, it was probably the closest thing to "perfect" I'd ever encountered.

Alongside that incredibly irritating "navigate to code definition" popup, it feels GitHub has too many designers with too little to do, so they're desperately scrounging around for things to change to fill their day. Either that, or there's some monetization angle (ala the Reddit redesign) that we haven't seen yet.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#388

Post by wonderlg »

saltcured wrote: post #346
SenHeng wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember this happened before several years ago in a previous redesign where the top menu would just stretch to fill the entire screen. It was later changed to one with a proper max width. I guess they forgot that lesson.

Ha, to me it is an improper max width. My biggest peeve with the GitHub web UI is the squished center pane. I hate that it centers it with giant gutters wasting over half the width of a 4K monitor, should I choose to maximize a browser window. I'd much rather see everything shifted to the left. I'd even be OK with some soft margin still causing regular README text to wrap at a typical width. But, if there are long co…

Sorry but do you use full screen windows on a 4K monitor? I doubt any website is really designed to fill anything more than ~1400 horizontal logical pixels.

Re: Ask HN: Thoughts on new GitHub layout?

#389

Post by jagira »

peterkos wrote: post #375

Aside from the accessibility concerns -- which is honestly inexcusable -- the non-centered repo layout is so strange to me: All that info that's now in the sidebar is temporary. All of it. I never need to look at a project language more than once. However, it takes up 100% of the height of the page, so when I'm halfway through a README, the README gets offset by some magical space. The ghost of the 1 paragraph of "la…

Exactly. I can live with everything but that left aligned repository layout.
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